Movie Nation

My personal gauge of how a movie will do over a given weekend is the blog traffic on my review of said film.

By that standard, “Son of God” should open big. Not huge, but big.

And looking to Box Office Mojo for a prediction, I see that confirmed — $27-29 million. Really? I see that as a bit high, considering the film is a clipped together summation of the New Testament stuff from “The Bible,” the cable TV series. They’ve sold DVDs from it and everything. Not that much of the film is new material. But Mr. Mojo is saying Big Big Big opening, with “Non-Stop” hitting low to mid $20s.

How about Box Office Guru? He’s saying $24 million or so, not enough to best “Non-Stop.”

Liam is box office now? May be. Alls I’m saying is readers are flocking to reviews of “Son of God” at a 20-1 rate over “Non-Stop.” Seriously.

Both major prognosticators are saying “Lego Movie” will drop to $19-20 million this weekend.

None of the movies opening this weekend have the benefit of good reviews to help them cross the finish line. I found “Son of God” moving enough, and Liam is worth the price of admission for “Non-Stop,” much as Costner is for “3 Days to Kill.”

Blame Mel Gibson for it if you like, but no Jesus movie these days is worth its salt without an utterly unflinching treatment of his torture and crucifixion. And “Son of God” has stretches where the agony we watch this poor man endure is avert-your-eyes awful. If history ever produced a more excruciating form of punishment, it probably included lions at dinner time.
But “Son of God,” a big screen version of Mark Burnett and Roma Downey’s History Channel TV series “The Bible,” has a redemptive optimism about it that makes the brutality go down easier. Their Jesus may be all business. But he sports a beatific smile as he renders unto audiences lines that feel like rough drafts of the polished poetry of the King James Bible.
“I’ll give my stone to the first man who tells me he has not sinned” doesn’t have the memorable ring of “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” But that’s what Shakespearean editors can do for you.
It’s a standard issue Christ picture — hitting the high points from Jesus (Diogo Morgado) taking that first fishing trip with Peter (Darwin Shaw) to Lazarus to “Where’s Judas?” to “Give us Barabbas” and the long, final walk with a cross.
Unlike “The Passion of the Christ,” there’s no Aramaic with English subtitles, a lot less blood and no anti-Semitism. No character feels like a caricature — not the hypocritical Pharisee Caiaphas (Adrian Schiller) or the gruff and dismissive Pontius Pilate (Greg Hicks of “Snow White and the Huntsman”). But it’s also dramatically flat, with few actors making much of an impression as they play saints and sinners, the icons of The Bible.
An eight minute prologue takes us from Eve and Adam through Noah and Abraham to the Biblical “present,” in which the Apostle John (Sebastian Knapp) narrates the story — from recruiting Peter to the Miracle of Fishes and Loaves (unleavened pita bread here), from tackling the money changers in the Temple to the Sermon on the Mount.
The settings are passable versions of ancient Israel — digital models of Jerusalem, here and there, amidst the arid, rock-strewn landscape.
Among the cast, Hicks and Shaw have the most presence, with co-producer Downey (“Touched by an Angel”) managing a perfectly weepy Mother Mary.
And while Morgado’s Jesus suggests little of the charisma of this first “fisher of men,” it is a pleasantly retro, “Hippies will Inherit the Earth” take on the man. The film emphasizes his conection with children, his role as rabbi or “teacher,” and his big lessons about forgiveness, humility, compassion for the poor and wariness of the wealthy. Morgado’s Portuguese accent makes him stand out from the often Brit-accented Apostles, Pharisees and Romans.
Like the criticized TV series it is culled from, the film’s main aim is to be inoffensive, and with multiple directors and screenwriters, they at least manage that. Parts of the story emphasized by the Catholic Church (the redemption of Dismas, on the cross next to Christ) and that inspired “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (the spear of Longinus delivers the coup de grace) are touched on.
And unlike the bloody blockbuster by Mr. Gibson, this loving, forgiving “Son” comes back long enough to remind us of why the religion, founded in his name, has endured.

Roger Moore’s interview with the big screen Jesus and the creators of “Son of God” is here.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense and bloody depiction of The Crucifixion, and for some sequences of violence
Cast: Diogo Morgado, Greg Hicks, Roma Downey, Darwin Shaw
Credits: Directed by Christopher Spencer, scripted by Richard Bedser, Christopher Spencer, Nic Young and Colin Wash. A Fox release.
Running time: 2:20

The once and forever hobbit Frodo Elijah Wood has had a pretty interesting career post-Middle Earth. Not that a lot of people have noticed.

He was terrific in a small role in “Sin City,” was perfect in “Everything is Illuminated,” starred in a lot of interesting films that no one saw — from “The Romantics” and “The Oxford Murders” to “Maniac.” He had a couple of TV series, including that one where he interacted with a dog that only he could see was a man dressed up in a dog suit — “Wilfred.”

In “Grand Piano,” he’s a concert pianist forced to play an “unplayable” piece, in front of an audience, and play it perfectly or a sniper will off him and his movie star wife in the theater in front of everybody. It opens in a couple of weeks.

Questions for Mr. Wood? Comment below, and thanks for the help.

　The label “durable” as in “durable leading man” has never fit Liam Neeson more than it does in these late career action pictures that have become his bread and butter since “Taken.”
He still looks like he can take a beating, and so he does. He looks as if he can administer one or two, so he does.
He looks like he might have “particular skills,” his character’s famous self-description in “Taken.” And he proves it.
In “Non-Stop,” those skills would be those of a U.S. Air Marshal, one of the guys entrusted with keeping airline flights free from hijackings. His Bill Marks is a drinker and a smoker, a sad-eyed man who doesn’t like to fly but still does this dangerous job for a living — after he’s had a toot in the parking lot, a snort in the bar or what not.
And Neeson makes us believe in this guy, first frame to last.
“Non-Stop” is a solid, workmanlike action picture that builds slowly, bends over backwards to over-explain itself and its villain, and delivers a lulu of an ending.
Somebody is threatening the 150 passengers and crew on Marks’ cell phone, and framing Marks with the dirty work to his superiors back on the ground. In the wee hours of this red eye from New York to London, that first text arrives on his “secure” phone.
“In exactly 20 minutes, I’m going to kill someone on this plane.”
Marks may have had a nip from a bottle before boarding, but he’s sharp enough to observe and profile every face on the plane — the hostile bald guy, the young black man in the sunglasses and hoodie, the Muslim, this nervous man or that too-friendly woman.
Julianne Moore plays a helpful passenger sitting next to him. Michelle Dockery (of “Downton Abbey”) is the stewardess who trusts him with their lives. Linus Roache is the pilot who’s willing to hear Marks out.
They all give him the benefit of the doubt, up to a point. The script here goes to some pains to make Marks out as a possible suspect, something the viewer never buys into.
Marks struggles to get a handle on things, to keep the passengers in the dark. But as he rousts this one and manhandles that one, they get suspicious. There are New Yorkers on board.
“Does this scenario seem familiar?”, they start to ask one another. They’re talking 9/11. Or maybe Agatha Christie’s “Ten Little Indians.” They don’t say.
“Orphan” director Jaume Collet-Serra does a little better by Neeson here than he managed with the identity-theft thriller “Unknown.” Jumpy, unbroken tracking shots follow him through the confined space of the plane building tension as Mark confronts this person or that one, trying to figure out who’s texting him. Brawls in the confined spaces of a jetliner — a lavatory, for instance — are thrillingly staged and edited.
But tension is in short supply as we lurch toward that aforementioned lulu of a finale. The red herrings, throwing us off the scent of who is pulling the strings, are well-thought out, the resolution, not so much.
And then there’s the talking, rationalizing villainous behavior. Yes, bad guy’s have a point of view. Only in the movies do they stop, in the middle of the action, to deliver it in a speech.
But Neeson, at 61, is proving to be a more reliable action hero at this age than any of his peers. Grizzled, wrinkled with care and worry, he’s not just convincing as a guy with “particular skills,” he’s a man with the weight of the world — or a jetliner — on his shoulders. He’s so real that he makes the somewhat unreal film surrounding him more grounded than “Non-Stop” has any right to be.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, some language, sensuality and drug references
Cast: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Michelle Dockery, Linus Roache
Credits: Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, scripted by John W. Richardson, Christopher Roach, Ryan Engle. A Universal release.
Running time: 1:44

　We should all be so lucky as to live in a world designed, peopled and manipulated by Wes Anderson.
His latest film, “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” is a dark, daft and deft triumph of design details. From the purple velvet with red piping hotel uniforms to the drinks, colognes and artwork of Europe between the World Wars, Anderson ensconces his eccentric characters and us in a time of baroque, imaginary four-star hotels run on what used to pass for four star service.
It’s all about framing — the odd aspect ratios Anderson plays with in the shape of the screen, elongated — made to fit narrow rooms, tall elevators, funicular rail cars and tall actors like Ralph Fiennes, Jeff Goldblum, Edward Norton and Tilda Swinton. Fittingly, the story is a framework within a frame, a tale told by a long-dead novelist (Tom Wilkinson) about what inspired his famous novel, a tall tale he heard as a younger man (Jude Law) from the owner, Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) of the gone-to-seed Grand Budapest Hotel.
And framed within that framing device is the long flashback to the old hotel owner’s youth, when Zero Moustafa was “lobby boy” to the famed concierge, Monsieur Gustave, played with hilarious relish by Fiennes.
M. Gustave is all about service and good manners, maintaining “the faint glimmer” of civilization as war is about to break out all around the imaginary Republic of Zubrowka.
“A lobby boy is completely invisible, but always in sight,” he lectures. He usually follows his lectures with a florid and overlong poem of his own composition, but no one pays attention those.
And M. Gustave? His attentions all go to the guests — little old ladies that this perfumed and flamboyant dandy beds during their stay at the Grand Budapest.
“I go to bed with all my friends,” he croons. It’s just part of the service.
But when a guest (Tilda Swinton, hidden in old age makeup) dies and Gustave is in the will, the concierge faces his ugliest foes — an heir (Adrien Brody) and that heir’s murderous henchman (Willem Dafoe). Before this tangled knot unravels, Zubrowka will be invaded, Gustave will steal a famous painting and be framed for murder, we’ll see a prison break, a snowy chase on skis and sleds (filmed with miniatures and dolls) and a noisy shootout.
And the old hotel owner Mr. Moustafa will remember the love of his younger self (Tony Revolori), the birthmarked baker (Saoirse Ronan, in Scots accent) who helped him try to save M. Gustave from the violence and bad manners and prison sentence threatening his happiness.
There are hints of many jaunty earlier Anderson films here — “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Royal Tenenbaums.” But here there are balalaikas and bursts of violence and profanity and sexual crudeness that jolt us into remembering the cruelty that M. Gustave is keeping at bay, and into realizing this sentimental world of rich dowagers drifting from spa to spa isn’t as genteel as it seems.
The Wes Anderson repertory company — from Jason Schwartzman to Bill Murray — went to Germany with him to film this funny fantasia. Harvey Keitel, Lea Seydoux, Mathieu Amalric and many other faces familiar from indie and European film turn up in the sets of the Hotel Borse (in Gorelitz, Germany) and Potsdam of this quirkier than quirky movie, which Anderson says in the credits was inspired by the Austrian Belle Epoch novels of Stefan Zweig. The Max Ophuls film of Zweig’s “Letter from an Unknown Woman” is one of the great triumphs of sentimental 1940s period piece production design, just as “Budapest” is the greatest expression of Anderson’s love of ornate buildings, old money, older furniture, tiny models and modish, saturated colors.
“He certainly sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace,” Mr. Moustafa eulogizes M. Gustave, at one point. That could be turn out to be the deadpan Anderson’s epitaph as well, should this Tsar of Surreal Silliness ever be so gauche as to die. Or retire.

MPAA Rating: R for language, some sexual content and violence
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, F. Murray Abraham, Saoirse Ronan, Jude Law, Adrien Brody, Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe
Credits: Written and directed by Wes Anderson, story by Anderson and Hugo Guiness . A Fox Searchlight release.
Running time: 1:39

Steve Coogan may have copped Oscar nominations for writing and producing “Philomena,” a film that offers Judi Dench another shot at an acting Oscar and Coogan a chance to re-invent himself as an actor.

But the reason Coogan’s always needed reinventing  is his greatest creation, the self-absorbed, tactless, book-smart but dopey Alan Partridge. He can make all the movies he wants, and in Hollywood he’s starred in “Hamlet 2” and stolen bits of “Tropic Thunder”, “The Other Guys” and the “Night at the Museum” movies. In Britain, he’ll always be that touchy, puffy-haired boob with the catch-phrase – “A-haaa” — born in his ABBA fixation, a toxic dunce they’ve been watching fail his way off TV and into local radio in 20 years of Alan Partridge TV series and specials.

Now “Alan Partridge”, the movie, a hit in Britain, earns a limited release in the U.S. It’s a hilarious 90 minute State of the Partridge project, and you don’t need to have seen the series and specials to get the scores of jokes. But they sting even more if you have.

Partridge, now 55, is clumsily hosting a show on North Norfolk Digital’s Radio Norwich. Quite the comedown from his days hosting a generic and inept chat show on the BBC.

“You know who I am. I haven’t been off TV THAT long.”

The big running gag here is his “Sunset Boulevard” vanity, the testy insistence that he used to be big, even if he just does local radio and voice overs for butcher shop commercials.

But Radio Norwich has been bought out by a new conglomerate, and when the layoffs come, self-preservation king Alan hurls his colleague (Colm Meaney) under the bus. Pat, the night DJ, doesn’t realize this when he seizes the station and takes the staff hostage at an office party. His old mate Alan is the one he trusts to be the go-between with the cops.

“There’s a madman! With a gun! He’s IRISH!”

So the cowardly Partridge has to cozy up to the Irishman with a gun, try to do the police’s bidding and, while he’s at it, curry favor with the new owners and turn this life-or-death situation into a kick in the rear for his career.

The situation, borrowed from movies like “Airheads,” is nothing special. But there’s warmth in Coogan’s scenes with Meaney, a couple of 50somethings for whom life is just different shades of disappointment.

What’s hilarious here are the scads of what could have been throw-away lines, every one a killer. Alan on guns — “I’ve never fired one in anger. Or at a cat.”

On cops rushing him to get to the point of an anecdote — “Why? Do you have another siege to get to?”

What’s it like, trapped with the others inside the station?

“Scary, stressful. Lots of shouting. A bit like being married again.”

Every record intro on the radio is a keeper — “That was soft rock cocaine enthusiasts Fleetwood Mac.” And “What a voice. You can keep Jesus. As far as I’m concerned, Neil Diamond will ALWAYS be King of the Jews.”

Fans of the TV series will spy Alan’s long-suffering assistant and would-be conscience, Lynn (Felicity Montagu) and the Geordie-accented buffoon Michael (Simon Greenall) who has long been Alan’s biggest fan.

It’s a comedy of sight gags, zingers and awkward pauses — lots of those. Sentimental at times, yes. But funny. Always.

Coogan can gripe about freeing himself of Partridge, and he even made the period piece “Tristram Shandy” into a “Steve Coogan runs from Alan Partridge” comedy. It’s great to see him embracing his inner oaf, this venal, petty middle aged media flop.

He has taken the advice his Alan gives poor Lynn in the film, “Enjoy me. Everyone else is.”

MPAA Rating: R for language, brief violence and nudity

Cast: Steve Coogan, Colm Meaney, Anna Maxwell Martin, Felicity Montagu

Credits: Directed by Declan Lowney, screenplay by Steve Coogan, Neil Gibbons, Rob Gibbons. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:30

　”Stalingrad” is a huge, old-fashioned combat spectacle, a war story told on a vast scale and shown on vast IMAX movie screens, in 3D no less.
It’s Russian — oh so very Russian, an epic of “The Great Patriotic War” that mixes vivid, blood and guts combat with chest-thumping patriotism and pathos.
And unfortunately, it’s more than a little clumsy, from its absurd framing device to the simple head count of the cast of “fathers” who saved a young woman, and the world, during the “bloodiest battle in history.”
In late 1942, Soviet reinforcements cross the Volga River and storm, literally, through a wall of fire to seize an apartment building on the front lines. They rescue a young rape victim (Mariya Smolnikova) and struggle to protect her from the Germans, led by a mournful, war-weary captain (Thomas Kretschmann), who are on the brink of throwing the Soviets out of the city.
Comrade Kapitan Gromov, played by an emotional Colin Farrell look-alike (Pyotr Fyodorov) worries that his tiny band will be too busy saving Katya to save Mother Russia. But in the symbolism of the cinema, she is both girl-victim and Mother Russia — traumatized by war, clinging to vestiges of civilization in her parents’ art and piano-filled apartment, hell-bent on hanging on and having her revenge.
Director Fedor Bondarchuk (the fine Afghan war thriller “9th Company” was his) stages the room-to-room, hand-to-hand fighting with a brutal, bloody brio. The thoroughly ruined sets, from the riverfront with its improvised rafts floating troops across, to the everything-is-burned-bombed-and-broken apartment blocks, put us inside the battle — in 3D.
But this film was plainly built for the Putin-esque Soviet — sorry, Russian — market. Every excess has an old fashioned hint of Soviet era propaganda about it. As interesting as it might be to get a whiff of how the Russians see themselves and their history, Bondarchuk keeps finding ways to turn off overseas audiences.
Take the frame in which the story is told. Bondarchuk’s famous actor-director father Sergei (“Waterloo”, “War and Peace”) plays an elderly Russian doctor telling the story of his mother’s survival to a bunch of injured Germans trapped in a building collapse in the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami. Heroic Soviet — sorry, Russian — rescue teams went there to save the day.
The old doctor tells the story of the battle through the eyes of his mother, who always told him he “had five fathers,” the men who saved her and perhaps fathered him during or after the battle.
The problem with that? There are plainly six, not five, men heavily invested in Katya’s survival. At one point, they even pose on the steps of the apartment building — six of them. Who was left out of Mom’s count; the kapitan, the silent opera singer turned killing machine (Alexsei Barabash), the piggish sniper (Dmitri Lysenkov), the gruff Navy warrant officer (Oleg Volku), the one they call “Angel” or the other they call “Sissy”?
Landing Kretschmann, whose big break was saving “The Pianist” at the end of Roman Polanski’s WWII film, meant building his character up, giving him a Russian “comfort woman” (Yanina Studilina) whom he holds hostage because she’s a dead ringer for his dead wife and treats as his lover-confessor — even though they don’t speak each other’s language.
Convincing digital dive bombers attack and missiles fired from German “Moaning Minnie” launchers streak through the smoke-filled skies. Jews are murdered, and back-talking Soviet sailors are summarily executed. Every so often, for the sake of a plot device, a soldier of this side or that one yells “Freeze” (in Russian or German, with English subtitles) rather than carrying on the killing spree, just so we have the hint of a foes taking prisoners and debating, face to face.
It’s a movie every bit as bloated as the biggest movies Bondarchuk’s dad made, in his heyday. In detail and combat spectacle, “Stalingrad” is hard to beat. And whatever its failings, one can’t help but be curious about a story as connected to national identity as this one, a film that like today’s Russia, feels more Soviet than Russian.

MPAA Rating:R for sequences of war violence
Cast: Pyotr Fyodorov, Mariya Smolnikova, Thomas Kretschmann, Yanina Studilina, Dmitri Kochkin, Dmitri Lysenkov, Aleksey Barabash, Andrey Smolyakov, Sergey Bondarchuk
Credits: Directed by Fedor Bondarchuk, written by Sergey Snezhkin, Ilya Tilkin. A Columbia release.
Running time: 2:11

Very sad to hear that funnyman, writer/director Harold Ramis has died. He was 69, the Chicago Tribune says in the story on his death.

He wrote “Caddyshack,” was famous for the “Ghostbusters” movies, reliable support to Bill Murray in “Stripes,” and the director of Murray’s best film — “Groundhog Day.”

Interviewing him several times over the years, he always came off as a mellow sort, very much like the guy we say in “Knocked Up,” playing Seth Rogen’s dad — sweet, kind, tolerant.

I remember him talking about the role he fulfilled in the “Ghostbusters” line-up, that point guard feeding the ball to Bill Murray. He is the screenwriter responsible for bringing fraternities back to popular approval among college kids with “Animal House.” His scripts (“Stripes,” “Meatballs’) made Bill Murray a star, and padded Chevy Chase’s bank account (“National Lampoon’s Vacation.”).

But to me, he’s the guy who figured out that ingenious use of “I Got You Babe” in “Groundhog Day,” a song playing on a clock radio that begins as a joke, turns into a taunt, morphs into a mournful place and then rings, as Murray’s character reforms enough to “get it,” into something triumphant.

Very sorry to see Ramis go. He was a good one.

There’s a lot to be extrapolated from this weekend’s box office tallies, far beyond the ongoing love for “The LEGO Movie” and arrival of Kevin Hart as a big box office star. Another $30 million or so added on this weekend.

“LEGO” will hit $200 million by early next weekend. Not bad. “Frozen,” however, will have doubled that by Oscar night.

“About Last Night…” plunged PLUNGED in its second weekend out. What, nobody dates after Valentine’s Day? A 70% plunge means it’ll manage $50 million or so, when all is said and done. Maybe a little less. That’s going to be about 1/3 what “Ride Along” did. So, Ice Cube is the secret ingredient?

“3 Days to Kill” could have used a less loony/more logical script. Here in America, M. Luc, we don’t joke about torture. Better reviews would have helped “3 Days to Kill” do better than $12.3 million. He’s quite good in the film. But I dare say that Kevin Costner’s ability to pull in an audience is limited, which doesn’t speak highly of the chances that “Draft Day” will lure the sports talk radio/Sportscenter fans to theaters in April.

“Pompei” has no real stars and the spectacle alone only pulled in $10 million in ticket sales. Botched marketing. It’s not awful, a better script would have made this the crowning jewel in Paul W.S. Anderson’s sorry spectacle of a career.

“The Monuments Men” has done great business, considering the weak reviews and old men in the cast. It’ll wind up, when all is tallied, in the $75 million range — US box office.

If you go WAY down the charts, you’ll see that Oscar contenders “Wolf of Wall Street,” “American Hustle” and “Gravity” are still doing decent business, “12 Years a Slave” and “Philomena” respectable business and “Her” and “Nebraska” and “August: Osage County” less impressive.